Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Preface xi
Introduction Locating Tai-Ahom in Assam: The Place and People 1
Part One
Historical and Comparative Perspectives on Identity: Indian, Assamese and Tai-Ahom
1. Identification in India 37
2. Colonial Origins of Ahom 77
3. The Memory of the Local: The Stories the Buranjis Tell 113
Part Two
Tai-Ahom: A Language and Culture of Emotion
4. Rationalizing a History 147
5. Performance and Politics of Tai-Ahom 177
6. There Was No Plot in the People’s Struggle 225
Conclusion The Past and Present: Connecting Memory, History and Identity 251
Epilogue 267
Notes 269
References 301
Index 319

Promotional Information

A study of identity and its connection to memory, focusing on the history of community identity formation among the Tai-Ahom in Assam.

About the Author

Yasmin Saikia is Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is the author of In the Meadows of Gold: Telling Tales of the Swargadeos at the Crossroads of Assam.

Reviews

"Yasmin Saikia opens a new door to margins of national power, memory, and history, where most people live today. Her fresh voice and engaging prose weave together high theory, political engagement, textual expertise, ethnographic detail, personal experience, and a sweeping command of history in South Asia from medieval times to the present, with critical wisdom and graceful poignancy. Her history is more than history. It is an erudite evocation of the multiple pasts of Tai Ahom people struggling to invent themselves in contemporary Assam, modern India, and a world of national minorities." David Ludden, author of An Agrarian History of South Asia " ... this impressive contribution to understanding the links between Asian regions demonstrates that rivals can come unexpectedly. Saikia's account of social ambiguities shoudl serve to inspire other sophisticated scholarship on northeastern India and its people."--Contemporary South Asia, 14(3) September 2005